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Ancient artifacts smuggled to Hobby Lobby headed back to Iraq

May 03, 2018 00:35·
The exterior of a Hobby Lobby store

The exterior of a Hobby Lobby store

"In October 2010, an expert on cultural property law retained by Hobby Lobby warned the company that the acquisition of cultural properly like from Iraq, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, carries a risk that such objects may have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq", a Department of Justice document released by the US Attorney's Office on July 5, 2017, reads.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be sending several thousand smuggled ancient artifacts that were shipped to Hobby Lobby stores back to Iraq.

The shipping labels on the artifacts falsely described them as "ceramic tiles" or "clay tiles (sample)" from Turkey or Israel. Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby's president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets that was used in Mesopotamia, while the seals are engraved with pictorial stories, and clay bullae are balls of clay on which seals have been imprinted.

It's unclear if Hobby Lobby knew the items were illegally smuggled. "The return of the artifacts comes after arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the artifacts as well as $3 million in civil penalties over the company's role in the smuggling scheme".

Staff from Hobby Lobby did not met the owner and dealer of the artifacts. instead they deposited the purchase money into seven different bank accounts that were in other people's names.

Hobby Lobby did not receive all of the 5,500 pieces that it bought. It agreed that if it receives any of the remaining antiquities or learns where they are, it must notify the federal government, according to court documents. It also agreed to turn over any pieces that it receives.

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Numerous tablets came from the ancient city of Irisagrig and date from 2100 to 1600 BC, with other artifacts thought to be around 500 years older, ICE said.

Hobby Lobby's president a year ago opened a Bible museum in Washington said to contain some 40,000 biblical artifacts.

In 2017, he said his company had made "regrettable mistakes", adding: 'We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled'. The Museum of the Bible, which spans 430,000 square-foot in what was once a refrigerated warehouse, received $201 million in artifacts from Hobby Lobby, and rents storage space in Oklahoma from the company.

Two clay cones also were inscribed with royal inscriptions from the Early Dynastic Lagash II periods, around 2500 B.C.

An official from the Iraq Embassy in Washington, DC, told NPR that the returned objects would most likely be exhibited at Iraq's National Museum.

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